happiness she wished only to die
with me, and received several thrusts. I was entangled in a great cloak
that they flung over me, carried down to a gondola, and hurried to the
Pozzi dungeons. I was twenty-two years old. I gripped the hilt of my
broken sword so hard, that they could only have taken it from me by
cutting off my hand at the wrist. A curious chance, or rather the
instinct of self-preservation, led me to hide the fragment of the blade
in a corner of my cell, as if it might still be of use. They tended me;
none of my wounds were serious. At two-and-twenty one can recover from
anything. I was to lose my head on the scaffold. I shammed illness to
gain time. It seemed to me that the canal lay just outside my cell. I
thought to make my escape by boring a hole through the wall and swimming
for my life. I based my hopes on the following reasons.

"Every time that the jailer came with my food, there was light enough to
read directions written on the walls--'Side of the Palace,' 'Side of the
Canal,' 'Side of the Vaults.' At last I saw a design in this, but I did
not trouble myself much about the meaning of it; the actual incomplete
condition of the Ducal Palace accounted for it. The longing to regain my
freedom gave me something like genius. Groping about with my fingers,
I spelled out an Arabic inscription on the wall. The author of the work
informed those to come after him that he had loosed two stones in
the lowest course of masonry and hollowed out eleven feet beyond
underground. As he went on with his excavations, it became necessary to
spread the fragments of stone and mortar over the floor of his cell. But
even if jailers and inquisitors had not felt sure that the structure of
the building was such that no watch was needed below, the level of the
Pozzi dungeons being several steps below the threshold, it was possible
gradually to raise the earthen floor without exciting the warder's
suspicions.

"The tremendous labor had profited nothing--nothing at least to him that
began it. The very fact that it was left unfinished told of the unknown
worker's death. Unless his devoted toil was to be wasted for ever, his
successor must have some knowledge of Arabic, but I had studied Oriental
languages at the Armenian Convent. A few words written on the back of
the stone recorded the unhappy man's fate; he had fallen a victim to his
great possessions; Venice had coveted his wealth and seized upon it. A
whole month went by